Ian Cowie was named Consumer Affairs Journalist of the Year in the
London Press Club Awards 2012. He has been head of personal finance at
Telegraph Media Group since 2008, having been personal finance editor
since 1989. He joined the paper in 1986. He is @iancowie on Twitter.

Never mind the borrowers, here's a new campaign for savers

Ros Altmann, the heroine of the struggle to restore 160,000 people’s pensions after company schemes went bust is backing a new General Election campaign to force politicians to help savers.

Borrowers may make more noise but savers comprise the silent majority by about six to one in terms of accounts. Now the pressure group Save Our Savers is calling on MPs and candidates in the General Election to spell out their policies on savings – and threatening its members will withhold votes if they don’t.

Irresponsible lending and borrowing created the credit crisis and Government policies such as quantative easing can be seen as an attempt to borrow our way out of a deep hole of debt. Save Our Savers is calling for voters to force politicians to change direction.

The campaign launch coincides with a revival in saving, prompted by fears of hard times ahead in the credit crisis. The Office for National Statistics household savings ratio exceeded 10pc in 1997, when Labour came to power, before collapsing to less than a tenth of that level two years ago. By the end of last year, the savings ratio had staged a partial revival to 7pc.

The latest issue of the ONS's Social Trends report found that Britons are relying heavily on bricks and mortar to accumulate wealth, holding more than half their net assets in residential property. According to the report, total personal wealth, net of liabilities, amounted to £6.5bn, 56 per cent of it in the form of residential buildings. By contrast, financial assets held in pensions and life assurance amounted to £1.8bn.

Dr Altmann, a governor of the London School of Ecomics and former adviser to the Government, said: "We must restore Britain's once-strong savings culture.

“People who saved in order to be able to look after themselves have lost out badly in recent years and the policies pursued to fight the credit crisis have damaged pension saving and pensioners.

“Those who did the right thing seem to have been penalised by measures which have taken money away from savers and pensioners and transferred it to borrowers and bankers. This is not in the long term interests of our economy. Let’s hear what the prospective candidates would do for savers and pensioners."

Save Our Savers claims it has evidence to show how important the savings issue is to the general public. Its research suggests almost half (45 per cent) of adults want to see the political parties clarify their policies on savings as part of their election manifesto, while one in five said they would not vote for a party or candidate that was not prepared to make their policies on savings clear.

Rev John Strain, who founded Save Our Savers, said: “Savers form a huge community and can no longer be ignored.

“By adding their name to the campaign, savers can help us ensure that their plight and their anger are not swept under the carpet during this election.

“Savers can also keep a close on eye on whether their local candidates have responded to our survey, and we encourage people to remind their candidates that failure to make clear where they stand on savings could cost them a vote.”

You can add your voice to the campaign and see where your local candidates stand on these issues at www.saveoursavers.co.uk